Rate My Professor Scott Sommerfeldt

Scott Sommerfeldt is a retired professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University, where he specialized in active and passive noise control and energy-based acoustics within Physics. He received a B.Mus.Ed. degree in 1983 and an M.Sc. degree in physics in 1986 from Brigham Young University, followed by a Ph.D. in acoustics from The Pennsylvania State University in 1989. Following his doctorate, Sommerfeldt held a faculty position at Penn State for six years before joining the faculty at Brigham Young University in 1995. He advanced to chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department from 2003 to 2007 and served as dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences from 2007 to 2017. Under his leadership, significant advances occurred in mentored student research, and he played a major role in elevating BYU's acoustics program to one of the top programs in the country.

Sommerfeldt's research interests encompass active noise control, active vibration control, structural acoustics, acoustic radiation, vibration and control of shells, passive noise control, and energy-based acoustics. His pioneering contributions include the development of acoustic energy density methods for attenuating enclosed sound fields, weighted sum of spatial gradients techniques for acoustic power from vibrating structures, and radiation resistance matrices for sound power determination. Applications of his work include noise reduction in tractors, computer fans, and airplane toilets. He has published nearly 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and over 70 conference proceedings papers, with key publications such as 'Adaptive structures: dynamics and control' (2001, cited 374 times), 'An adaptive filtered-x algorithm for energy-based active control' (1994), 'Narrowband and broadband active control in an enclosure using the acoustic energy density' (2000), and 'Global attenuation of broadband noise fields using energy density control' (1997). A Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), he served as ASA Vice President (2018-2019), on the Executive Council (2009-2012), and chaired committees on Structural Acoustics and Vibration (2000-2003) and Noise (2012-2015). He has been on the ASA Committee on Education in Acoustics since 1994 and received the ASA Silver Medal in Noise (2021) and the 2023 Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education. Sommerfeldt also served on the board of directors of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering twice and advised numerous graduate theses.